


pay the man.

by teethrotter



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Car Accidents, Character Death, Headcanon, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Pre-Slash, Vomiting, just hatori shimura and takahashi are alive and well and hatori died some time ago, takahashi and shimura are not quite a romantic couple yet but they might as well be, to a degree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 05:40:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17238449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teethrotter/pseuds/teethrotter
Summary: Shimura dreams of Hatori. Takahashi is unable to help him.





	pay the man.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yotsu8a](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yotsu8a/gifts).



> this is a holiday gift for my lovely boyfriend !! it correlates heavily with our survivor au, wherein takahashi and shimura survive the yotsuba kira and eventually move into a new house together ( takahashi's daughter ( haru ) lives with them during the week ). of course, there's more meat to it, but that context should be enough to set this fic up to be vaguely coherent to anyone not involved. 
> 
> content warning for somewhat graphic descriptions of vomiting, a car crash, and the gore as a result of such, but i believe that they're all relatively tame.

_Paper pages fluttering gently together within the well-maintained, hardcover body of a book. The scent of mahogany and cedar and hickory. Clipped, warm laughter. Suit jacket sleeves brushing up against one another. Brewing coffee in a Syphon. Flashes of teeth in a wide grin. Lips fitting around silent words, arched with fondness. Leather Bergere chairs. Half empty beer glasses. Gently ravenous brown eyes. A mole placed just underneath a full lower lip. Crunching Autumn leaves. A cartoonish black cat punctuated with an exaggerated frown: a sad cat._

_More pages, this time bearing neat, legible, pretty penmanship rather than typed print. Hints of those same pages, through smell, sight, or audio, omnipresent throughout the brief snapshots. Shimura can taste the combined scents on the back of his tongue, threatening to choke him with either comfort or malice; he isn’t certain of which one anymore. Regardless, they are overpowering, rendering him helplessly flat on his back and accompanied by a one-word mantra: Hatori, Hatori, Hatori, Hatori, Hatori, Hatori._

_The smells give way to the bitter taste of fear, the same fear that enacted Hatori’s death sentence. Concern for his own well-being. Concern for the well-being of his wife and children. The nausea chasing the realization that it is not mere numbers being added together, but actual people with lives beyond their occupations being murdered. The stifling reality of rejection that had been with him since his earliest memories. Simple impulsivity. The sheer depth of Hatori’s mortal terror following the moments before his outburst until his ultimate death hours later would never be truly known by anyone but himself, alone in that as he had been alone in every other crisis._

_The taste once again becomes odor. A portion of the stench is permanently embedded into the fabric of Shimura’s couch, where Hatori had spent what may as well have been his last moments. He remembers the man’s incessant trembling well, his gasps and hitches of breath, his eyes, typically so clear and telling, red and clouded with swollen tears. He remembers the wet of those tears seeping into the shoulder of his shirt, his own endless stream of apologies just barely damming the flood. He remembers Hatori’s forced speechlessness, his trachea too overrun with strangled hiccups to allow any semblance of air to pass. He remembers being thankful for his inability to see Hatori’s face; his bleeding heart would have been entirely unable to bear the brunt of his misery._

_Now, Shimura’s heart aches, and aches, and aches, worse than it ever could have that evening._

_Next comes the image of Hatori’s car, a small, deep blue thing of monetary value less than his status would otherwise indicate. The image presented to Shimura’s internal eye, however, does not depict a vehicle; he only knows that is what the mangled mess of metal, glass, and rubber once was. It had been thoroughly decimated by a large semi engaged in a wayward, rapid left turn, crushing the artificial extension of Hatori’s body nearly on impact. The precious core never had any semblance of chance._

_While somewhat_ expected _, Shimura never could have properly prepared for his coworker’s scripted death, written into play by Higuchi’s damned hand just as easily as Hatori’s own crafted children’s stories. He glimpsed the horrific wreckage on the local news later that night, the photograph forever embedding itself into his visual memory as the victim’s name was announced. A pit formed deep in his stomach as he grotesquely observed the front end practically folding in on itself, the vehicle compacted into something half its original size. The glass of the windshield had been largely thrown inwards; Shimura can’t help but pray that Hatori was killed immediately, before the glass was able to impale him. The possibility that he died in debilitating agony, sobbing and bleeding and_ alone _, is too much for Shimura to bear._

_Abruptly, the flashback ends, and the driver’s side of Hatori’s disfigured little car comes into view. Glass from the windows is scattered throughout the street, leaving them relatively open for viewing save for sparse clumps of material clinging to their now misshapen borders. Shimura, totally disembodied as he is, as if observing through a camera lens, begins to drift involuntarily forward to peer inside._

_As he gradually nears the wreckage, panic and nausea bloom in his distant stomach. The gaping, crooked mouths of the crushed windows draw him ever closer, and he knows that they will swallow him alive if presented with the opportunity. He loses the privilege of coherent thought as their individual glass teeth become visible against the car’s interior._

_Within the mangled corpse of the vehicle, pinned to the driver’s seat with needles of windshield glass, lies Hatori’s shell of a body. His clothing is unspeakably disheveled and pierced through in places. Superficial lacerations are gored into much of the expanse of his visible skin, most with glass embedded within or nearby. His head is dipped forward, his hair shaggy enough from months without trim to conceal all but the tip of his nose. There is rusty, crusted blood threaded through the stark white and gray._

_Hatori’s lips cannot be seen, but they begin to move. There is no other reasonable explanation, despite his utter stillness, to describe why his voice can now be heard._

_“You didn’t ask me to stay. I know how much you wanted to. You know I wouldn’t have fought you. You knew all along.” There is no hum of incoming traffic, no noise whatsoever. “You never even tried to save me. You knew how. You could have prevented this. At your house, it would have taken two words. At my last meeting, it would have taken a few sentences, a very small amount of discussion. You just didn’t care enough to pursue it.” A beat. “Your cowardice killed me._ You _killed me. You are the reason I will never see thirty-five. You are the reason my children will grow up without a father. You are the reason I will never see them become teenagers. You are the reason my father will pretend to grieve at my funeral. You are the reason…” The statements become largely a non sequitur, endless and merciless, penetrating to the core of Shimura’s being. “I hate you. I hate you. Murderer. Murderer. Murderer, murderer, murderer,_ murderer _,_ murderer _–- "_

Shimura wakes with a jolt, a sob catching in his throat, tears coursing down his face, cold sweat sheeting his body, and bile exploding up his throat.

He bolts from the bed and into the adjoining bathroom. Falling heavily to his knees, he jerks the toilet seat up, hardly managing to duck his head quickly enough for yesterday’s meals to plummet into the bowl. Retches wrack his frame as he sobs wetly, attempting to choke on his noises to prevent waking Eiichi or ( god forbid ) Haru. His hands, palms slick with sweat and freezing to the touch, shakily clutch the rim of the toilet bowl, the man taking in unstable breaths as he forces his body to partially calm. The stifled sobbing does not cease, his shoulders hunching together and his esophagus aflame, his face all but oozing with an unflattering mixture of sweat, mucus, and tears.

Suddenly, there is a tentative hand upon his tense shoulder, and Shimura realizes that he has failed.

Takahashi smooths Shimura’s clumped bangs back from his damp forehead almost on reflex. The hand placed previously over his shoulder dips to rub gentle circles into the small of his back. Takahashi’s side presses to Shimura’s arm.

The man heaves pathetically, simultaneously falling deeper into his personal pit of self-loathing and struggling to refrain from allowing Eiichi to simply take him into his arms and set everything right again ( as if anything could ever truly be _right_ for either of them ). Bile dribbles from his lips to drop into the clouded water. He rasps for breath, haggard and pale and frigid, as his body finally appears to still.

“Bad dream?” Takahashi inquires softly, as if he hasn’t tired of parroting the same question over the course of countless nights just like this one. The hand pinning Shimura’s bangs back now snakes downwards to coil lightly over his belly, encircling the man’s midsection.

Shimura only nods; Takahashi is thoroughly acquainted with the regular subject of his nightmares by now, the only one that consistently goads him to tears and vomit and sleeplessness. He edges marginally closer to the other’s thigh, placing their bodies side by side.

“Mm.” Takahashi goes up briefly onto his knees to tenderly set the toilet seat down, flushing the bowl’s contents. He wastes no time in settling back beside Shimura, returning his arms to their loose, secure configuration. “Want some mouthwash? Water?”

“Y-Yes. Thank you.” Shimura’s words are croaked and cracked, his throat caustic with bile and emotion. Fresh tears continue to drip down to his chin, his sniffling undoubtedly obnoxious and wet, his chest fluttering shallowly with breaths he cannot yet control, but the unmanageable sobbing has quieted.

Takahashi guides the man carefully to his feet, supporting him by draping an arm over his waist. Shimura’s hands grip to the fabric of his shirt, tremulous, unthinking. He simply pads along with Takahashi to the nearby sink, his fingers falling from their place as Takahashi hands him a cap filled with mouthwash. He gargles and spits, focusing on slowing his breathing, before he is given a small cup full of tap water. Nodding his thanks to the man alongside him, he swallows, returning the cup to its place upon the rim of the sink. Exhaling shakily, he reaches to switch the faucet on, splashing distractedly at his already moist face before toweling himself dry. Once he feels that he has sufficiently washed up, he finally shifts his attention fully to Takahashi, whose features are all but alight with anxiety and concern. The bearings of shame encapsulating Shimura’s heart threaten to crawl up his raw throat.

“Do you need anything else?” Takahashi’s tone is soft, pliable, almost apprehensive, as if he is afraid of misspeaking. Shimura merely shakes his head, swallowing the palpable lump in his throat. Even though he has startled and woken the man numerous times with his violent reactions to his near nightly torment, he is always in fear of somehow upsetting him further, as if he isn’t the one saving grace he has on nights such as these.

“No. I… It’s alright. Let’s go back to bed.” The statement tilts at its tail end, as if in question, but Shimura’s fingers dart decisively to Takahashi’s palm. The other man seems to hesitate, his eyes near frantically scanning over Shimura’s torso, but he nods his unneeded assent. This time, he allows Shimura to lead him back into their bedroom, his fingertips lightly embedded into his palm.

They settle underneath the recently disturbed comforter, Shimura pressing his shoulders back to Takahashi’s chest as the man curls around him. Large arms gently wrap over his stomach. The nape of his neck is timidly nuzzled. He begins to physically relax for the first time in what feels to be hours.

Minutes composed solely of silence drift lazily by as Shimura wills himself thoughtless and Takahashi struggles not to fidget, mentally debating the current best course of action. The last thing he wishes to do is prod inappropriately; he knows all too well the only subject capable of reducing his housemate to such hysterics.

“Do you want to talk about… him? H-Hatori or the dream? I don’t mind listening. Or trying to help.” It has taken him an eternity to find his voice since the events that had stolen it from him, and how easy it is to be faced with the threat of losing it once again every time his nerves threaten to overtake him.

Shimura is silent for several seconds, but remains still; Takahashi does not panic, as he has yet to launch the man into another fit.

He inhales deeply, the area between his shoulder blades nudging into Takahashi’s sternum. “I appreciate it, I really do. But it’s alright. Whenever I… dream about him, it tends to be the same thing, over and over again. This one was nothing new. Don’t worry.” He is thankful for Takahashi’s inability to see his face, for his inability to see the depth of his lie; every occasion such as this, he tries to coax Shimura to _talk_ , even just a phrase or two, but his efforts consistently prove to be fruitless. 

Simply put, Shimura did not _deserve_ to talk, not after the role his hand played in Hatori’s death. He did not deserve any form of relief, did not deserve to have another help to bear the brunt of his cross, did not deserve Takahashi’s selflessness. Nothing Takahashi could ever offer him was his to take, nor should it be; his exclusive purpose was to provide him and his daughter both with a life better than the one that had been stripped from them. His sole obligation was to maintain Takahashi’s hold on his indecisive voice and provide Haru with everything her weary, solicitous heart could ever desire. He no longer deserved to live for himself, not with the lost life he would be debasing by doing so; Hatori deserved better.

Takahashi’s cautious doubt is thick in the air, because he _knows_ , knows he is being lied to, that Shimura isn’t telling him something, but he has never been one for prying into matters that he was clearly intended to keep away from. His voice fails him just as it had all those months ago, reduced to holding the other man close to his chest and pressing his forehead into his dark hair in a meaningless ( desperate ) endeavor to ward off any more thoughts of Hatori from his brain. He did not deserve to be haunted as he was by his ghost.

Shimura yawns, careless and unbothered, something Takahashi knows he is not. “Let’s go back to sleep. I’m sorry for waking you up.” He longs to be able to honestly say that it will not happen again. “Haru has school tomorrow.”

“Right. You’re right.”

Takahashi’s heart aches, and aches, and aches.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading !
> 
> http://eiichitakahashi.tumblr.com/


End file.
